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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (105575)	6/2/2005 4:38:09 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 108807

I admit that I didn't read the whole article. I read the abstract, then skimmed down to the section on "Sustainable Agriculture," which I read with some care. In general, I agree that there are things in the world system of agriculture which need to be changed. But this article doesn't specifically discuss organic farming. It does address some of the legitimate concerns of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, and the like, but as far as I could see didn't advocate their total elimination, as would be the case if we went truly organic. Also, it doesn't offer its own definition of sustainable agriculture. It offers three different definitions from three different sources (text accompanying footnotes 107, 108, and 109), but doesn't select or create its own definition. It does discuss "certain methods that enhance sustainability.: Interestingly in terms of our earlier discussion, while it advocates (and I agree) reducing our dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, it specifically does NOT advocate eliminating them and going strictly organic. There are some places in which I have problems with the logic of the arguments being made. For example, I am concerned about this quote: "Large civilizations have risen on the strength of their agriculture and subsequently collapsed because their farming methods had eroded the natural resource base (106)." While that may have happened -- I don't have the book that the footnote refers to and it isn't referenced on a web site -- there are several concerns the book may or may not have addressed. One is the impact of larger populations -- is it a problem of the agriculture collapsing or the population outgrowing the agriculture's ability to feed it, so that if the population had remained stable the food supply could have remained adequate indefinitely? The "because" implies a connection that may or may not be valid. Post hoc propter hoc is a very compelling fallacy. It's seldom, IME, that one factor is responsible for the decline of civilizations. The conclusion they draw may be correct or it may not, but it cannot be validly drawn from the facts presented. (This isn't to say that the book might not do a better job, I don't know, but the article is in question.) The next sentence is: "Today's conventional or industrial agriculture is considered unsustainable because it is similarly eroding natural resources faster than the environment can regenerate them and because it depends heavily on resources that are nonrenewable (e.g., fossil fuels and fossil aquifers)." This statement is not footnoted, so presumably it is the authors' position. The "similarly" is highly questionable. Our conventional or industrial agriculture is not similar to that of any previous large-scale now collapsed civilization. Then there is the argument which always comes up in this sort of article, that something is not sustainable because we are running out of the necessary resources. We see this over and over, and the fallacy is that it doesn't take into account technological changes and advances. Yes, some day we will run out of oil, but there is still a lot of oil out there, we have plenty of warning that will run out, and alternate sources of energy and new technologies are constantly being developed. For example, some day we will run out of diamonds, so one could ague that any machines that rely on industrial diamonds will no longer work. But we are already creating adequate substitutes, and if we do run out of diamonds we will re-engineer machines so they don't need diamonds. Some day we will run out of every non-renewable natural resource, from iron to aluminum to sand to make computer chips. But mankind has always worked its way around these issues, and will continue, I believe, to do so. The "we'll run out of this particular resource, and we assume it won't be replaced by some other resource or technology" argument has never yet been valid, and I doubt that it ever will; certainly not in the next few centuries. This sort of questionable logical validity, unfortuantely, permeates the article. I agree with much that the article presents -- indeed, as they point out, many of the changes they recommend are already being made by a large number of farmers. But I don't believe that the article even attempts to, let alone proves, that a worldwide conversion to organic agriculture is either feasible or socially acceptable.